Thread: Twinkies

I worked for a crane rental company a number of years. I was a truck driver and therefore not union. The operators and oilers were union. When things got really busy for the operators, ofttimes they would send a qualified driver out as an operator. Funny part was when the union MADE them pay us "scale" rather than our normal hourly rate. Several times that cost me money as I would have been on OT at driver pay. Didn't make much difference to me as I enjoyed operating on an occasional basis.

We had a few super dedicated union operators that were want to bitch every time we showed up with truck load of their crane. One HOT afternoon, one of the operators told us drivers that helping build the crane that he was going to "file" on every damn one of us sorry, non-union, scab sobs because we were doing "union" work on a union job and we taking money from the union guys.

I was knocking pins into the boom with a 16lb hammer when he started that rant. He had his fat ass up on the boom and was yelling down at us. I handed the hammer handle up to him and he took it with a funny look on his face and asked me "WTF?"

I told him the A/C was really cold in my truck and to let me know when he got it unloaded. The other two drivers followed suit and we left that over fed a-hole standing in the sun begging us to come back and finish building the crane.

WE sat in our trucks and enjoyed being on the clock under the A/C while he whined to dispatch. Dispatch called me on the company radio so the operator could hear it too and told us that we were NOT to help build that crane under any circumstances. Mr Super Operator got swing that hammer the rest of the day while we watched TV in our trucks.

If he'd kept his mouth shut, we'd have had that rig hammered together in a few hours and he could have been boomin' and swingin' before dark without breaking a sweat.

When it came time to move the crane, he was REAL nice to us drivers. He'd brought donuts and junk out to the rig. We laughed and joked and ate his donuts and when the time came to start knocking it out, we thanked him for the donuts and told him we'd best sit on the sidelines and the let the union boys work. We sat on our trailers until the loads were ready.